Thursday, June 23, 2005

Amaranth

Isn't this the most beautiful vegetable? It was part of dinner tonight.

At Farmer's Market, they described it as "Chinese Red Spinach" but I am pretty sure, botanically speaking, that it is an amaranth, a green leafy vegetable and seed totally unrelated to the Order of the Amaranth (weird one, huh?)

I washed the leaves and sauteed a clove of garlic in olive oil for a minute, then dumped the leaves in and flipped them over a few times until they wilted a little.

They turned the garlic slices quite pink. Pretty.

The result was nice and tasted vegetal and green, a nice healthy side dish for my frozen pizza from Trader Joe's.

In Oaxaca, they make a delicious sweet of popped amarath seed called an alegria which means "happiness". Spending a buck on a big slab of alegria and chomping on it for the next few days always made ME happy.

The seeds are super high in protein - 16 to 18 percent. As my dad would say "Good and good for you."